Positive variance, or a new trend?

#1 5th February 2011, 2:15 AM

Been feeling pretty good lately. I've been a break even player stuck in the micros for a long time. Never had to re-deposit, but never cashed either, and my Full Tilt bankroll had dwindled to around $50 last summer. Then last fall I changed several things:

I started reading Harrington on Hold'em
I joined CardsChat
I started doing the Full Tilt Poker Academy lessons and challenges
I switched from playing a variety of formats to almost exclusively doing the $2.25 SNG's

After a bit of getting used to it, my results since December have looked like this:

I single tabled most of these, but towards the end I was doing 2 tables. The last 3 tourneys are when I switched to the $5.50's and cashed in all of them.
So now I'm looking for the opinions of the more experienced players:

Are 87 tourney's enough to consider this a trend, or is it still within the range of positive variance?
When do you consider a particular format to be "under control"?
When moving on from one SNG format, do you prefer going to a higher buy-in SNG, more tables of the same format, MTT's at the same buy-in, or a comparable cash game?

I'm a bankroll nit and have no problem moving back down if something's not working. Any advice on this would be appreciated, thanks!

#2 5th February 2011, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by x2486

Been feeling pretty good lately. I've been a break even player stuck in the micros for a long time. Never had to re-deposit, but never cashed either, and my Full Tilt bankroll had dwindled to around $50 last summer. Then last fall I changed several things:

I started reading Harrington on Hold'em
I joined CardsChat
I started doing the Full Tilt Poker Academy lessons and challenges
I switched from playing a variety of formats to almost exclusively doing the $2.25 SNG's

After a bit of getting used to it, my results since December have looked like this:

I single tabled most of these, but towards the end I was doing 2 tables. The last 3 tourneys are when I switched to the $5.50's and cashed in all of them.
So now I'm looking for the opinions of the more experienced players:

Are 87 tourney's enough to consider this a trend, or is it still within the range of positive variance?
When do you consider a particular format to be "under control"?
When moving on from one SNG format, do you prefer going to a higher buy-in SNG, more tables of the same format, MTT's at the same buy-in, or a comparable cash game?

I'm a bankroll nit and have no problem moving back down if something's not working. Any advice on this would be appreciated, thanks!

87 Tournaments is, unfortunately nothing. Sorry to say but you cannot really draw any conclusions from this sample size. Hell, it's within the realm of "positive variance" to play 1000 games and be over your true ROI.

Format under control? When you've played thousands of them, and you are the best at your limit, it's never going to be really under control though.

Why are you moving on to differant formats? This is up to you but, i feel that knuckling down and learing one format at a time is going to be hugely beneficial. The changes between cash games, SNGs and MTT's are extreme, and beginning players simply won't be able to adjust to the differing conditions. If you are serious about making it in poker, i'd definitely suggest trying to master one particular game ( be it turbo, regular, MTT, cash, whatever).

#3 7th February 2011, 10:59 PM

In my opinion you need to play another 100+ games at the $2.25 level to get a good idea of where your at

and you will need a higher br to play comfortably at $5

just my 2c

inti

#4 8th February 2011, 3:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiZZiM

87 Tournaments is, unfortunately nothing. Sorry to say but you cannot really draw any conclusions from this sample size. Hell, it's within the realm of "positive variance" to play 1000 games and be over your true ROI.

Format under control? When you've played thousands of them, and you are the best at your limit, it's never going to be really under control though.

Why are you moving on to differant formats? This is up to you but, i feel that knuckling down and learing one format at a time is going to be hugely beneficial. The changes between cash games, SNGs and MTT's are extreme, and beginning players simply won't be able to adjust to the differing conditions. If you are serious about making it in poker, i'd definitely suggest trying to master one particular game ( be it turbo, regular, MTT, cash, whatever).

Thanks for the response. I realize that this sample size is too small to give me my true ROI, but I've been thinking about this and it seems to me that maximizing profit should be a higher priority than getting my ROI as high as I can at a particular level.

The way I see it, my ROI is going to be a function of my skill level compared to my opponents for each format I play. So even though my ROI would be lower at a higher levels, playing $5.50 with a 10% ROI is better than playing $2.25 with a 20% ROI. Also, presumably I can learn more and become a better player by playing better opponents. Of course, this requires maintaining an adequate bankroll and dropping back if the ROI drops too much at a higher level, but dropping down a level has never been a problem for me.

As for the idea of having a format "under control", I guess I was trying to ask when you feel confidant that you're not a losing player at a particular level. If one player has a 25% ROI over 100 games and another has a 5% ROI over 200 games, neither one may be showing their "true" ROI, but I would be more confidant that the first player was a winning player than the second.

After doing some searching, I think what I may have been looking is either the "confidence interval" or the "credible interval" - something to tell me the expected range for my true ROI. I found one article that gave the following 'confidence intervals' for SNG's:

100 games: ~23%
300 games: ~40%
1000 games: ~66%
2000 games: ~82%

I assume that this could be represented by a bell curve with a larger standard deviation for fewer games, but I didn't take enough statistics to follow the math.

The point of trying other formats was to learn more and to see where the most profit could be made. I had settled on SNG's because my bankroll was very small and I felt like I had the least variance there. I think I will continue to stick with them for a while and try to build up my bankroll more before trying other things.

#5 8th February 2011, 3:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by x2486

Thanks for the response. I realize that this sample size is too small to give me my true ROI, but I've been thinking about this and it seems to me that maximizing profit should be a higher priority than getting my ROI as high as I can at a particular level.

The way I see it, my ROI is going to be a function of my skill level compared to my opponents for each format I play. So even though my ROI would be lower at a higher levels, playing $5.50 with a 10% ROI is better than playing $2.25 with a 20% ROI. Also, presumably I can learn more and become a better player by playing better opponents. Of course, this requires maintaining an adequate bankroll and dropping back if the ROI drops too much at a higher level, but dropping down a level has never been a problem for me.
Yep, you are on the right track. Having a good ROI is nice, but i'd much rather prefer a high $/hour. You can achieve this a few ways, moving up in stakes or by heavily multitabling.

The problem with moving up whilst playing only a few tables is that you are setting yourself up for more variance. You can achieve the same $/hour in some cases playing the smaller limits while multitabling more, which actually limits the amount of variance you will encounter, Which means you can stay at a particular level for longer. The other benefits of doing more tables is that you gain experiance quicker, The more games you play, the more decisoins you face and the more exp you can gain. I understand playing against better competition as a way of training, but the game really doesn't change much from the $1 level to the $100 level, it's just the players change and we have to change our ranges thinking somewhat.

The con of multitabling is that it's a skill in itself, and it doesnt happen overnight, But with good work ethic, you can go from 2 tabling to 4 then 6 and so .
As for the idea of having a format "under control", I guess I was trying to ask when you feel confidant that you're not a losing player at a particular level. If one player has a 25% ROI over 100 games and another has a 5% ROI over 200 games, neither one may be showing their "true" ROI, but I would be more confidant that the first player was a winning player than the second.
So it's basically just asking yourself what you think of your game, based on how other players are doing, and based on how much knowledge you think you have. Be honest with yourself and your leaks or you may be setting yourself up for failure in the higher limits.I wouldn't really put too much emphasis on either of them being "good" players. Even terrible players can go on upswings like this, so to make any predictions on how either will do is kind of a waste of time. Having confidance can also be a killer remember. There are a lot of players who are super confidant in their game after a winning streak, and they either get overconfidant, or they fail to do the things neccesary to improve, they get complacent and thus, their game suffers.
After doing some searching, I think what I may have been looking is either the "confidence interval" or the "credible interval" - something to tell me the expected range for my true ROI. I found one article that gave the following 'confidence intervals' for SNG's:

100 games: ~23%
300 games: ~40%
1000 games: ~66%
2000 games: ~82%

I assume that this could be represented by a bell curve with a larger standard deviation for fewer games, but I didn't take enough statistics to follow the math.
Yeah, it's not only the games you play, but moreso the amount of study and review you do also. How much work you put in away from the tables can significantly affect these numbers.
The point of trying other formats was to learn more and to see where the most profit could be made. I had settled on SNG's because my bankroll was very small and I felt like I had the least variance there. I think I will continue to stick with them for a while and try to build up my bankroll more before trying other things.

I have an "Roi Simulator" which is based on ROI, ITM% and finish distribution which can give incredibly accurate findings. If you'd like to see it just PM me. It can also give what you can expect to encouter in terms of variance of winning and losing streaks.

All the best.

#6 9th February 2011, 6:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiZZiM

Yep, you are on the right track. Having a good ROI is nice, but i'd much rather prefer a high $/hour. You can achieve this a few ways, moving up in stakes or by heavily multitabling.

The problem with moving up whilst playing only a few tables is that you are setting yourself up for more variance. You can achieve the same $/hour in some cases playing the smaller limits while multitabling more, which actually limits the amount of variance you will encounter, Which means you can stay at a particular level for longer. The other benefits of doing more tables is that you gain experiance quicker, The more games you play, the more decisoins you face and the more exp you can gain. I understand playing against better competition as a way of training, but the game really doesn't change much from the $1 level to the $100 level, it's just the players change and we have to change our ranges thinking somewhat.

The con of multitabling is that it's a skill in itself, and it doesnt happen overnight, But with good work ethic, you can go from 2 tabling to 4 then 6 and so .

I'm having a hard time deciding what to do here. I agree that I should get better at multi-tabling, and that more tables of $2.25 would give me more experience and less variance than fewer tables of $5.50. But the cost is an additional 2.5% rake, poorer reads on my opponents, and less time to think about each hand. I have Hold'em Manager, but I find the HUD to be very distracting and I usually only turn it on briefly if I want specific information about an opponent. I have 4-tabled cash games without much problem, but even two tables of SNG's start to get stressful when both are down to just a few players. I expect my ROI would decrease under either scenario, but hopefully my $/hr should increase. I guess I'll probably take occasional stabs at both to see which suits me better and back off if my bankroll starts to drop.

One anecdote about opponent skill level is that in one of the few games I played at $5.50, someone in chat tried to guess my hand and was fairly close. I don't recall anyone even trying that at $2.25 or below.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiZZiM

Yeah, it's not only the games you play, but moreso the amount of study and review you do also. How much work you put in away from the tables can significantly affect these numbers.

I'm working on learning all I can from books, CardsChat, and the FTPA, but I need to get better at using Hold'em Manager to analyze my play.

Thanks for all your comments.

#7 10th February 2011, 10:53 PM

What are your goals? Figure out how to get from A to B.. ez game!

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